Special Education

Testing the educational progress of students with disabilities
has long been a source of confusion for states, and in the past
many excluded those students from assessments entirely.

New research, though, shows that states appear to be struggling to
develop guidelines to determine which students should be tested, and
how the tests should be administered.

A close look at the guidelines that already have been issued shows
that policies on participation, accommodations, and test result
reporting vary widely. That needs to change, the author of the research
says.

Using data from the National Center on Educational Outcomes,-- a
University of Minnesota-based organization that monitors testing and
outcomes for disabled students--the center's co-director, Martha L.
Thurlow, concludes that many states are modifying their testing
policies to include more disabled students. She presented her findings
at the American Educational Research Association's national conference
in Chicago last month.

At least 11 states seek to include as many disabled students as
possible, and that number is increasing quickly, making the issue a
tough one to study, Ms. Thurlow noted. "Most states are attempting to
modify what they're doing to be more inclusive," she said.

Previous NCEO research found an increasing number of states with
guidelines. But strategies one state might recommend, another might
prohibit.

"Most participation and accommodations policies were based on
opinions about what is best, with little evidence of research to back
up these opinions," Ms. Thurlow writes.

She found that while some states have guidelines in place, letting
disabled students take the tests, most of those states haven't figured
out how to report such students' results.

The reauthorization of the federal Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act could change the situation. Drafts of reauthorization
bills included language that would require states to test disabled
students and report the results, and create alternative tests for
severely disabled students.

With each disabled student's individualized-education-program team
now making most decisions about whether the student should take a test,
Ms. Thurlow believes more research-based state guidelines would be a
big help.

For now, she suggests that teams base their testing decisions on
what a student is studying, rather than his or her disability.